Macavity's Memoirs: Calculus Interruptus
by Kirsten Louise
Summary: Macavity comes clean once and for all. Listen to him wax poetic about the early years, brotherly love, and why he finds those long division sums so enticing... Oneshot. Contains double entendre.


**Disclaimer: **I don't own the CATS universe. Aside from a minor OC cameo, I own none of the characters.

**A/N: **There is a paragraph in this story that, when you first begin it, sounds very risqué. PLEASE DO NOT STOP READING. IT IS _**NOT**_ WHAT YOU THINK! If you are still confused, there is an author's note addressing said paragraph at the end of the story.

Also, my Macavity, as a reviewer once put it, is rather posh. Do not be offended by his tea-drinking antics. You know you love him.

* * *

Call me Macavity. I confess a certain ... craving to set the record straight, as they say, on the subject of my origins. In other words, I should like to recount the circumstances that I feel best explain how I came to be the epitome of feline evil, and so on and so forth. This story has long remained undisclosed for the simple reason that I never before wished to share it; the past is sometimes better left shrouded in mystery.

Why, pray tell, do you believe that is? Come, come now; you needn't be coy. I am well aware that any cat who engages in ... hobbies such as mine is thought to be concealing a dark past, fraught with all manner of unmentionable horrors. I fear I am no exception to these speculations. Such is life. Some, the sympathetic few, will swear that I was unwittingly thrust into a life of crime as a tomkit, after the death of my parents or an equally sensational tragedy. Others claim that I have always been a "bad seed." Popular opinion has it that I killed my own littermates, for I was born with an insatiable bloodlust.

Which is rubbish, really. Honestly, what sort of Saturday Morning Cartoon character do these simpletons take me for? "Insatiable bloodlust" is dreadfully passé. As for that theory, my brothers are alive and quite well. I suspect you know Munkustrap, and that preening peacock that calls himself the Rum Tum Tugger. Silver-stripes still comes to visit on the weekends for tea and coffee and another attempt at persuading me to recant my dastardly deeds. I politely decline, offer him another jam tart, and then we go our separate ways, safe and sound. That is, as sound as we were prior to tea. As for the Rum Tum Tugger, let us just say that there is no lost love over our estrangement.

What? Can you not bear to imagine Macavity nursing a mug of orange pekoe or English breakfast? Has the mere thought of my owning a kettle shaken you? Horribly mundane, I know. If you like, you can pretend that I snatched it from the arthritis-riddled hands of a sweet, elderly woman who lives alone, save for her fifteen cats, and crochets scarves for her rosy-cheeked grandchildren. And the tarts? They were _store-bought_…Actually, I would never stoop so low as to make anyone eat store-bought pastries. Perhaps if the Rum Tum Tugger ... no, not even then. Some lines ought not to be crossed. But why would you believe me about such matters?

_There never was a cat of such deceitfulness and suavity._

That silly rhyme has accounted for more crackpot musings and misconceptions than I can possibly say. It hurts me that I am portrayed as so ... so two-dimensional. Well, I am deeply sorry to disappoint the general populace, but I enjoy quite a number of activities outside the realm of catnapping helpless kittens and getting my jollies from senseless dismemberment. It's always work, work, work and no play to you cats. Must I always be Macavity the Mystery Cat? Am I not entitled, at the very least, to an alter ego without homicidal tendencies?

But that is beside the point. I shall now tell you a story that has never before been heard by any cat; anything with a pulse, to be precise. It is not too late to walk away. Erase this conversation from memory if you prefer to delude yourself with one of the many thousands of tall tales that surround the early years of Macavity. Know that they cannot compare to the truth, for this saddest of stories is beyond the realm of normal imagination; no tragedy has ever befallen me, save one, but I cannot speak of it yet. I intend to do this properly, and, as such, we must begin at the beginning.

I look back on my kittenhood warmly; other than the occasional recollection of one of my erstwhile brothers shoving me into the bathtub after one of our spats. They were always considerate enough to do so when one of our humans was taking a bath. Brotherly love and all that. The perpetually dusty state of my coat is in no way, shape, or form related to this treatment, nor is my aversion to being within five feet of water of a depth exceeding two inches. Why ever would you suggest such a preposterous connection? You should be ashamed of yourself. At any rate, I paid them back in kind. Munkustrap, I dare say, will remember a particularly refreshing mid-December swim in the duck pond.

As I said, my memories of kittenhood are fond. You are, without a doubt, similarly familiar with my father; decidedly rotund, a bit mangy looking, spends an inordinate amount of time atop the vicarage wall? Indeed, my father is none other than Old Deuteronomy. I'll have you know that I had only the best intentions in mind when I catnapped him at the last Jellicle Ball. A little father-son time would not go amiss in this family. Regrettably, Deuteronomy cannot be charmed or coaxed into staying for tea; not for all the blueberry scones in the British Empire. As fat and cheerful as he is, you would think he would be salivating at the very thought of even one hot, blueberry scone smothered in sweet cream. Alas, it is not so.

My mother was, in fact, not the infamous Glamour Cat, Grizabella, but a queen known as Lethe. Her coat was also ginger, albeit less prone to grow in all directions at once. My earliest memories are of her singing to us, in a lovably off-key alto, and forgetting half the words. Tugger and Munkustrap insist that most of these memories are creations of my own mind, but they do me an injustice; my creativity far surpasses _that_. The truth of the matter is that, aside from her being uncannily forgetful at the best of times, Lethe was not an extraordinary queen. The three of us agree to that. Grudgingly, I might add. I was my mother's favorite, though she loved us all in her way. Yes, even Tugger. It is only for her sake that I do not maim him and feed his sorry, leopard-spotted hide to a rabid Pollicle for – I seem to be getting ahead of myself. All in good time, now. All in good time…

Family resemblance, as you may have realized, is in short supply among my brothers and I, as well as our parents. Feline genetics are one of the few pieces of knowledge that I have written off as utterly ineffable. There simply is no logical, earthly explanation for tabby stripes and leopard spots in the same litter. Don't get me started on that ghastly mane.

I know you're dying to hear all the juicy details about my sadistic tendencies toward performing sickening acts of cruelty on mice and other small animals, but I have news for you: I am a cat. I _eat_ mice. My father eats mice, his father before him ate mice. The loveable, cuddly tom who works at the rails bloody well _eats mice_! And that is NOT because we revel in pain, but for a mind-bogglingly straightforward reason. We… are… _cats_. If a cat must be held accountable, what about Jennyanydots? It's practically a crime, befriending the poor creatures and lulling them into a false sense of security before ruthlessly killing them in cold blood! Now _that _is depraved. It's enough to make one ashamed of one's felinity. Sarcasm, sarcasm, sarcasm. In all seriousness, humans are the disgusting ones, with their peanut-buttered mousetraps and rat poison; I, for one, have never seen a human eat one of these mice. Wasteful poachers! But do you call them cruel? No, because you are spitting on Macavity for economically ridding the world of household pests. Can your puny minds not grasp the absurdity of this condemnation?

Moving along now, this is where our story truly begins; with Isabella. She was, naturally, enamored of me from the moment we first laid eyes on one another. Though I was at first unsure, I found that these feelings were reciprocated. I would often fall asleep in her arms after an especially nice cuddle. When – Oh, for the love of the Everlasting Cat, must I spell everything out for you? Isabella was the young woman who took me in, not a queen with whom I had a sordid love affair. Being a genius is exhausting when one is forced to associate with the smallest of minds. But I suppose there is nothing to be done for it. Now. Where was I? I believe the deciding factor in our pleasant relationship was our shared gingerness, so to speak. It forged a bond of sorts between us, through which we could communicate. Not very well, I might add. "Call me Macavity," I told her, but, regrettably, Isabella forevermore called me Marmalade.

If you so much as vaguely entertain the notion of snickering, I will personally drown you in the Thames. Pardon, but a speck of, er, dust, seems to have lodged itself in my eye.

All the same, we had a special understanding, Isabella and I. Not once did she attempt to sustain me with cat-food, dry or wet, canned or bagged. I dined on lox and fresh Alaskan crab – not that revolting, cheap imitation stuff, mind you – every night, and drank my fill of rich cream. Divine decadence. It's a wonder I'm not as fat as Old Deuteronomy, pampered housecat that I was. I rather enjoyed the hassle-free domestic life, to be perfectly honest. There was none of this scrounging in alley rubbish bins for scraps or hitting up street hustlers for a decent sprig of catnip. Isabella disapproved of catnip on principle, though I was permitted to sample it on occasion. In retrospect, it proved a terribly irony, for a far more sinister temptation lurked within my reach.

Summer came and went, and autumn was upon us. Neither I nor Isabella was pleased that she had to return to that wholly fascinating establishment that humans refer to as school. A waste of time, by and large, if my extensive research into the human condition has taught me anything. That Darwin fellow had a far more optimistic view of the world than I, for this "natural selection" phenomenon, as far as I can see, has thus far been ineffective. Humans do not impress me. Millions of years worth of evolution, and what does the human race have to show for it? A hole in the ozone, and iPods. But that is another story altogether. The hours spent without Isabella were lonely and long. My charming personality and approachable demeanor are of no worth without someone to charm, and I found myself in the grip of tedium. Then everything changed.

It was a day like any other; a Tuesday, if memory serves. Isabella left her dearest Marmalade to his own devices, and trudged off to another eight hours of hellish education. Out of respect for our routine, I positioned myself in the entranceway of her bedroom, prepared to greet her cordially and wheedle a kitty treat or two out of her. Never let it be said that I had ulterior motives … But, in contrast to other days, Isabella did not arrive alone. Unbeknownst to her, she carried Temptation herself across the threshold, and into our lives.

You never forget your first time. From the first quivering of my tail as I stalked toward her, careful to make my presence known, to my last moments of rapture, I remember every second in exquisite detail. She lay provocatively atop the desk in Isabella's study, already spread out for my pleasure, every inch of her plainly _begging_ to be taken. I had to forcibly restrain myself, for seductions should never be rushed. I made use of her at my leisure, admiring the dazzling gold and black of her, savoring the feel of her spine, deliciously supple under my paws. As I inhaled the intoxicating scent of her, I knew that the battle had been lost. The very core of me pulsed with a brutal, unyielding need, and I took up that hard length, the last thread of my self-control snapping. She did not protest as I plunged in, claiming her, making her mine. It seemed like hours had passed when I at last lay beside her, nearly panting in ecstasy…

It was my first introduction to trigonometry.

I can tell by your stunned expression that a bit of arithmetic was quite possibly the last thing you were expecting. Clearly, you took it upon yourself to presume I was speaking of a queen, and not just _any _queen: the golden goddess whose name has so often been linked to mine. Allow me to take this time to be perfectly frank: I have never been, and never will be, in love with Demeter, in a requited _or_ an unrequited fashion. Nor have I stalked her, shown her favor of a subtle or obsessive sort, or tried to seduce her. I have laid not one paw on that queen in my entire life. The raging tempest that is the icy ocean of my unfathomable heart is an elaboration, to use a gross understatement, and was not brought about by feelings of jealousy towards Munkustrap and/or an underlying sibling rivalry. Again, there _is_ no icy tempest. Furthermore, I have never been nor sought to become romantically or sexually involved with Munkustrap himself, so the converse of this conjecture is equally preposterous. I cannot, at this time, confirm or deny having any licentious thoughts about said tom.

You will regret it if I am ever forced to speak of it again. Do I make myself perfectly clear? Very good.

The rhyme and reason of mathematics came as naturally to me as breathing. Sine, cosine, and tangent were not mysteries to be solved, but concepts of which I already possessed arcane knowledge. I became infatuated with this world of numbers and variables, matrices and logarithms, vectors and parametric equations, so long hidden from me. I found myself scrambling for a paper and pencil whenever Isabella left the room, anxious to continue my explorations in what I saw as the final frontier. Isabella's professor was fond of stating that no one had ever been injured undertaking conic sections, a sentiment she found distasteful. He will never know how wrong he was.

Euclid was the first mathematician to give testimony to the curious effects of mathematics on the feline mind, after impulsively handing his cat a stylus, a wax tablet, and the beginnings of a geometric proof. His cat, whose name has disappeared from the histories, completed it with minimal effort, the first draft of the famous Euclidian Algorithm. Euclid himself became famous, delighting in the human tradition of taking credit for another's hard work. His cat lived the rest of her days in obsession and paranoia. Euclid, in a shining moment of realization, sought to put an end to his cat's madness, but, by that time it was already too late. This knowledge I have pieced together from years of painstaking research, and it cannot be found anywhere in its entirety.

It is a little known fact that arithmetic affects the feline mind in much the same manner that heroin affects the human mind. As Euclid's cat had so many years before me, I became addicted to mathematics. Trigonometry was but the tip of the iceberg. Before long, my lust could no longer be slaked by mere trigonometry. Hero's Formula became hackneyed and I grew increasingly frustrated with the predictability of parabolas. I mistook it for want of a challenge, and ventured further into the realms of higher math, eagerly applying the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus. I confess that limits were my guilty pleasure.

I began to watch Isabella during the long hours in which she would fiddle with her protractor and her calculator, looking for all the world like nothing more than a passive observer, but it was merely a different form of gratification: _voyeurism. _My sweet Isabella was powerless to stop me. Among so many trigonometry-laced nights, one stands out in sharp relief. Isabella had once again fallen asleep at her desk, no. 2 pencil still held loosely in her left hand. Problem thirty-seven remained incomplete. I knew the answer. In a neat hand, I finished problem thirty-seven, circling the answer in accordance with Isabella's own habits. Driven by a disturbing hunger, I found myself unable to stop. There was no need to check my arithmetic as I finished the remainder of Isabella's assignment.

With a clatter, the pencil fell from my paw, startling Isabella into consciousness. Her eyes were unfocused with sleep as she looked at her paper, and then at me, and, in that single moment of haziness, I think some part of Isabella _knew_. But in the fraction of a second that it took Isabella to blink, the spell was broken. _'I've just had the silliest thought, Marmalade_,' she whispered, smiling crookedly. _'Imagine! A cat doing maths.'_ Pulling away from the desk, Isabella paused to scratch behind my ears, sealing my fate. How like Euclid's own epiphany, unheeded and forgotten. Yet, I do not blame Isabella for the part she played in my fall from grace, for she was a victim as much as I.

My legendary powers of levitation revealed themselves and the crimes followed in short succession. At first, my infractions of the law were minimal, petty theft and such. Cream went missing from the larders of Isabella's neighbors, along with several volumes covering topics like non-Euclidian geometry and quantum physics. If the local library noticed that their card-catalogue had a surprising number of empty leads, well, the Dewey Decimal System was awkward to begin with. Levitation leaves no paw prints, and even then I had a certain aptitude for committing misdemeanors. Isabella's own collection of literature was impressively large, though it followed no system of organization known to man or cat. I had given up trying to alphabetize it long before. In any event, a few more books were easily overlooked.

I wanted nothing more than to become a mathematician myself. However, myriad as mathematical principles and theorems are, they share one thing in common: they were never meant to be applied by cats. I was trapped between two worlds, my passion battling my nature for dominance. After my foray into differential equations, my crimes escalated rapidly. Felonies joined my repertoire: one count of arson, a negligible conviction of grand theft catnip, no less than five cases of perjury, conspiracy to commit treason against one's own species, and, of course, continual racketeering. Means organized crime. And some several hundred counts of driving under the influence, provided that levitating oneself while in a fit of mathematically-induced madness is privy to this jurisdiction. I have not looked into it.

Thus, the Napoleon of Crime was born, because, _really_, how menacing is Macavity the Math Cat? I happen to have my pride, and I _cannot_ and _will not _cope with being called the Napoleon of Calculus. Does it strike fear into your heart to hear it said that Macavity "just controls the order of operations"?

That was a rhetorical question.

I shall now skip ahead three months. That part of the story has but a sentimental relevance, after all. Purring as I pored over my latest modifications to the binomial theorem, I was oblivious to interference. Factorials have that effect on me. Why, just thinking about them makes me feel vulnerable, weak in the knees… Ahem. As I was saying, my every sense was finely tuned to accept nothing but the calculations that lay before me. It was then that tragedy struck, my period of unmitigated, uninterrupted obsession over. Isabella caught me in the act, as it were, surrounded by page after page of sums. _Calculus interruptus_.

It really is a shame that I did not take up Latin instead. Verb conjugation is a mild, non-habit-forming hallucinogen for felines which can be likened to intellectual catnip. Needless to say, Isabella was not happy with my antics, and I henceforth ceased to be her precious Marmalade. I would like to believe that the tears I may or may not have seen in her eyes – have I mentioned how incredibly dark it was? – were brought on by a sorrow so great that Isabella's ability to speak was temporarily lost. It aids in the forgiving and forgetting process when one is forcibly thrown from one's home without so much as a kind word. Even a 'Bad kitty!' would have been nice.

Isabella did not see the Maine Coon that slunk through the cat door at her heels. But I saw him, and moreover, I _knew _him. Those leopard spots could only have belonged to one tom. Though I have my speculations, I cannot be sure when or why I fell under his suspicions. Curious though he may be, the Rum Tum Tugger could not fill a metaphorical _teaspoon_ with cleverness. To this day, I cannot fathom how he discovered my obsession, or why he chose to wake Isabella. His motives remain unclear to me. Humans, I believe, refer to it as a "plot hole." To think, the one time that he showed any modicum of intelligence came at my expense.

If justice existed in this world, Tugger would be a fur collar right now. Regrettably, it does not, and he isn't.

Isabella still lives in that same house, though whether she thinks of Marmalade, I do not know. She has not owned a cat since. After Isabella, I could not go back to my life as a housecat. The memories of regular meals and a collar to call my own are far too painful. I no longer tamper with higher math, and have long since returned those books to their respective owners, complete with sincere, anonymous notes of apology. You know the rest.

_You'll be sure to find him resting, or a-licking of his thumbs,  
Or engaged in doing complicated long division sums._

I picked my poison long ago, and my former obsession has been reduced to naught but glowing embers. Very seldom do indulge myself, yet it is never without consequence. Each taste of that forbidden fruit means another violation of the law.

My name should have been remembered, spoken with reverence akin to so many masters before my time: Descartes, Pythagoras, Newton, Euclid, and Archimedes. But if you look in the histories, you will find that Macavity's not there.

* * *

**A/N: **Macavity's "first time" is his description of a trigonometry book. The hard-length mentioned is your standard no. 2 pencil. Puns are funny, do not scoff at them. 


End file.
